Zorn: Sorry, but outsiders don't get to tell us our mayor and governor suck
Border-czar designee chooses an unorthodox rhetorical gambit to open negotiations with Mayor Johnson and Gov. Pritzker
12-12-2024 (issue No. 171)
This week:
That’s so Brandon! — Updates on the misadventures of Chicago’s maladroit mayor, including the sketchy voting practices of his top adviser and his latest broken campaign promise
Land of Linkin’ — Where I tell readers where to go
Squaring up the news — Where Charlie Meyerson tells readers where to go
Yes, you want dryer balls — But you may not want detergent sheets
Cheer Chat — An update on “Songs of Good Cheer” as we head into this weekend’s run of shows
Quotables — A collection of compelling, sometimes appalling passages I’ve encountered lately
Quips — The winning visual jokes and this week’s contest finalists
Good Sports — Let’s get rid of divisions, conferences and leagues!
Tune of the Week — Alison Krauss and Yo-Yo Ma’s rendition of “The Wexford Carol.”
Reminding you again of two things
Many paying subscribers are coming up on their automatic renewal dates because the support program launched in early December three years ago. I have very little control over how the subscription interface works, but in the interest of extra transparency, I want to give you that heads-up (and urge those of you who have changed credit cards in the last year and are willing to continue supporting this publication to update your information).
A subscription to the Picayune Sentinel is an excellent holiday gift! Thoughtful, personal, just the right size and color. And gift subscriptions do not automatically renew.
Last week’s winning quip
It’s officially “surprise in your coat pocket from last winter” season. — @JonHansenTalks
Jon Hansen is a WGN-AM 720 program host and occasional member of “The Mincing Rascals” podcast team, among his many gigs.
Here are this week’s nominees and the winner of the Tuesday visual-jokes poll. Here is the direct link to the new poll.
No, you suck, Tom Homan
"Chicago's in trouble because your mayor sucks and your governor sucks," said Tom Homan, the former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) whom incoming President Donald Trump has tapped to be his “border czar.”
Homan, a native of New York state, was speaking at a holiday gathering Monday night on the Northwest Side hosted by the Law and Order PAC and the Northwest Side GOP Club. My response is vivid and profane, and ends with the declaration that we get to make blanket harsh statements about our elected officials, and outsiders should limit themselves to specific and factual criticisms.
Homan went on to invite the mayor, the governor and other Democratic leaders to “come to the table” to discuss the next administrations plans to make Chicago ground zero for mass deportations of undocumented residents shortly after Trump takes office Jan. 20. “If your Chicago mayor impedes us — if he knowingly harbors or conceals an illegal alien — I will prosecute him," he said.
Telling someone they suck and threatening to jail them isn’t a very diplomatic opening gambit for negotiations.
Pritzker showed Wednesday why he does not, in fact, suck by offering a reasonable response to the bluster of the pugnacious Homan:
Violent criminals who are undocumented and convicted of violent crime should be deported. I do not want them in my state. I do not think they should be in the United States.
But Pritzker went on to say that he’d “work to protect migrants seeking asylum, documented immigrants and undocumented people who had been living, working and paying taxes in the U.S. for many years,” according to the Tribune.
My three cents on the proposed hike in the checkout-bag tax
Since February, 2017, Chicagoans have been paying seven cents at checkout for all store-provided bags as part of an effort to curb litter and raise extra money for the city. Merchants have kept two cents out of every five to cover their costs.
A study by the University of Chicago Urban Labs found that, almost right away, “the bag tax reduced disposable bag use from 82% of consumers to just 54%, while doubling reusable bag use from 13% to 29%.”
Mayor Brandon Johnson’s budget proposal that could pass as early as Friday calls for an increase in that fee to 10 cents, with the merchants keeping only one penny per bag. His green-eyeshade team projects this will raise an extra $5.1 million.
The idea is sound — plastic waste is a scourge, and experience has shown that these small economic incentives tend to produce sizable reductions in the prevalence of single-use bags in the waste stream.
But the city has to hope the incentive won’t be too big, that the dime penalty per bag for forgetting to bring reusables from home won’t spur so many of us to bring our own bags that the projected new revenue will evaporate.
I’m one of those who has an irrational aversion to paying even seven cents for a bag — irrational because I’m not really all that careful with a dollar — and have taken it as a personal challenge never to pay it.
That’s So Brandon!
Updates on the misadventures of Chicago’s mayor
Mayor Brandon Johnson’s senior adviser Jason Lee lives in Chicago but voted last month in Houston
It’s not a huge scandal that Lee maintained his voter registration in Harris County, Texas, so he could vote for his sister, Erica Lee Carter, for Congress.
It might have been illegal in Texas, where Lee is registered to vote and where he reportedly told a poll worker he still lives, and where the election code says:
“Residence" means domicile, that is, one's home and fixed place of habitation to which one intends to return after any temporary absence. … A person does not lose the person's residence by leaving the person's home to go to another place for temporary purposes only. … A person does not acquire a residence in a place to which the person has come for temporary purposes only and without the intention of making that place the person's home. ... A person may not designate a previous residence as a home and fixed place of habitation unless the person inhabits the place at the time of designation and intends to remain.
Is Lee just a Texan who is here for “temporary purposes only”? Doubtful. The Illinois Policy Institute reported:
Records from the Chicago Board of Elections show Jason Lee registered to vote in Chicago on the day of the March 2020 Democratic primary, cast a vote in that election, and had his registration canceled on Sept. 6, 2023.
The Tribune reported that Lee has “served as Johnson’s senior adviser since the mayoral transition in May 2023 and signed an affidavit that month attesting that Chicago is his permanent home.”
It seems Lee either committed a mild form of voter fraud or he lied on that affidavit, but Johnson seems insouciant, brushing it off as “a personal matter” to reporters. More from the Tribune:
Asked who is investigating Lee’s voting and residency history, Johnson said, “As I understand, this will be the responsibility of the state of Texas to make some level of determination. … As that process continues to unfold and play out, decisions and conclusions will be made based upon how this particular matter is not only underscored but what is uncovered as a result of it being looked into.”
That is some Michelin-star word salad right there. We’d prefer to hear some icy determination to get to the bottom of the controversy.
Johnson pitches the installation of new speed cameras in Chicago to pay for restored police consent decree positions.
At last a tacit admission that the installation of speed cameras is about revenue, not safety!
Installing $2.64 million worth of new speed cameras … would generate an estimated $11.43 million. … There are more than 100 speed cameras around Chicago, issuing tickets to cars caught driving 6 mph or more over the speed limit. Chicago mayors have repeatedly turned to the cameras as a way to raise funds in recent years, with Johnson predecessor Lori Lightfoot lowering the automatic ticket threshold from 10 mph over the limit to help balance the 2021 budget.
In April, the Illinois Policy Institute took a hard look at the safety claims for the cameras, which have been operational here for 10 years:
A decade-long city study of collisions around Chicago speed cameras shows total crashes declined by 2% between 2012 and 2022 compared to a 27% increase in collisions citywide during that time.
The count of speed-related crashes around cameras dropped by 16% while the city recorded a 22% increase in speeding collisions. Bicycle and pedestrian crashes also fell by 44% around camera sites, mirroring the citywide decrease in pedestrian collisions reported during the decade.
The Chicago collision study indicates speed cameras reduced total crashes around 53% of camera sites. But whether those cameras were changing driving habits and increasing collisions outside of designated camera sites was not addressed.
A 2017 speed camera study in Great Britain found safety was highly localized around intersections with speed cameras. The problem was the number of collisions away from monitored zones increased as drivers abruptly slowed down to avoid fines, then quickly sped up after passing the surveilled intersections.
An Arizona study found no effect on collisions from the cameras.
And University of Illinois-Chicago research also concluded there was “little relationship between the number of tickets issued and the safety impact of cameras.”
Oh, and here’s an amusing flashback: “Johnson And Vallas Say They’ll ‘Phase Out’ Speed Cameras In Final Televised Debate Before Election.”
In a mayoral questionnaire compiled by WBEZ and the Sun-Times, Johnson wrote the cameras were a “cash grab” and called for investing in more traffic-calming infrastructure like speed bumps and reduced speed limits in certain areas.
This adds fuel to the accusation that the effort to lower the default speed limit in Chicago from 30 mph to 25 mph is also motivated by the desire for more revenue.
The city doesn’t really want everyone to stop speeding any more than it wants everyone to stop using single-use shopping bags.
Land of Linkin’
LateNighter “covers the world of late-night television from the inside out. We report on breaking news, programming moves, personnel changes, ratings wins, and more.”
The Skeet of God (formerly The Tweet of God) is now on Substack.
Steve Chapman: “Joe Biden and Donald Trump expose the framers’ big mistake on pardons.” He writes, “James Madison, chief author of the Constitution, dismissed worries about a president abusing the pardon power. After all, he argued, ‘the House of Representatives can impeach him; they can remove him if found guilty.’ I’ll pause to let you finish laughing. Presidents habitually evade accountability by waiting until their final days in office to carry out their most sordid acts, putting them beyond the reach of the legislative branch.”
“What Items Should You Buy Before Trump's Tariffs Kick In?” The Huffington Post suggests personal electronics, refrigerators and washing machines, tools, furniture. cars and motorcycles, and tequila. On it!
We are now watching the second season of “Somebody Somewhere” on HBO/Max, and just saw the “St. Louis Sushi” scene in episode two. The images aren’t gross, but the sound effects certainly are. For visually gross digestive humor, it’s hard to beat the toilet-explosion scene from “Not Another Teen Movie” or the Mr. Creosote scene from “Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life.” I advise my sensitive readers not to click on these links. And I invite my insensitive subscribers to leave links to their favorite gross-out scenes in the comment thread.
The Riverfront Times in St. Louis notes that the pickle coated with cream cheese and wrapped in ham in“Somebody Somewhere” is actually called “Minnesota Sushi,” and asks, '“So what gives, HBO? You didn't have to come after St. Louis like that.”
“Dan Fabian, WGN radio executive who commissioned 'Go Cubs Go,' dies at 81.” I interviewed Fabian dozens of times when I was on the radio beat in the 1980s, and he was classy and smart.
Squaring up the news
This is a bonus supplement to the Land of Linkin’ from veteran radio, internet and newspaper journalist Charlie Meyerson. Each week, he offers a selection of intriguing links from his daily email news briefing Chicago Public Square:
■ Former Chicago news executive Jennifer Schulze marvels at the blandness of a New York Times headline atop an account of Trump’s sit-down with NBC: “Trump Lays Out Agenda in Extended Interview.”
■ Then again, here’s columnist Jeff Tiedrich’s overview: “Donny … once again demonstrated that he has no fucking clue what he’s talking about.”
■ “If some of his nominees seem ludicrously unqualified— Well, who better to reduce the administrative state to rubble?” Cartoonist Tom Tomorrow surveys the kakistocracy taking shape under Trump.
■ “On Tyranny” author Timothy Snyder: Welcome to Trumpomuskovia.
■ CNN takes you inside deposed Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s garage full of luxury cars.
■ Columnist Charlie Sykes: This “extends a remarkable run of reverses” for Vladimir Putin …
■ … who’s welcomed Assad to Russia.
■ Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich fears a second U.S. Civil War.
■ Columnist Ken Klippenstein on the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson: “The major media’s obsession with decorum—we mustn’t speak ill of the dead!—has rendered it unable to tell the truth about who this man really was.”
■ The Daily Beast on the suspect: “Something happened to Luigi Mangione in 2023.”
■ The story’s created a field of comedic landmines for late show hosts.
■ Columnist Charlie Madigan finds—“in Evanston, of all places”—proof that the “old plague” of antisemitism is back: “I was puzzled about why anyone would think I wanted this kind of shit in my mailbox.”
■ NPR: A top editor at The Washington Post killed an article on a colleague’s departure for The New York Times.
■ Columnist Paul Krugman is quitting The New York Times.
You can (and should) subscribe to Chicago Public Square free here.
Yes, you want dryer balls
Two years ago, we ditched dryer sheets — the perfumed fabric softener rectangles of which Bounce is the best known brand — and replaced them with woolen orbs roughly the size of billiard balls.
They cost about $1.25 each bought in a six-pack, and we infused them with fragrance oil that cost about $7 for 15 ml., a supply we’re nowhere close to using up. We simply toss a few into the dryer with the wet clothes, and they do a similar, if not better, job.
Dryer sheets cost 30 cents each or thereabouts, meaning 50 dryer loads is the break-even point, all other things being equal.
From Slate’s 2023 article “Should You Use Dryer Sheets?”:
The Environmental Working Group published a piece in August 2022 that encouraged users to skip dryer sheets, noting that “heat-activated dryer sheets can pack a powerful combination of chemicals that can harm your health, damage the environment and pollute the air, inside and outside your home.”
An Apartment Therapy article from October 2022 discusses how a chemical commonly found in dryer sheets, quaternary ammonium compounds, “has been shown to cause or worsen asthma and irritate sensitive skin.”
Other blogs and forums on CNET, PureLivingSpace.com, and Draxe.com promote a similarly negative message. …
A HuffPost article from February points out that dryer sheets might not actually be doing what you think they’re doing. Dryer sheets don’t magically make clothes inherently softer; they make them feel softer by coating them with a softening agent, like stearic acid. “It’s the equivalent of putting a thick layer of lotion on your hand,” Patric Richardson of The Laundry Evangelist told Kelsey Borresen at HuffPost. That softening agent can build up on fabrics, and even make towels less absorbent.
Dependable Cleaners offers this list:
Pros Of Dryer Balls:
Made of all natural and sustainable materials, making them good for the environment
Allows hot air to circulate more evenly, reducing drying time by up to 25%
Ability to manage temperature settings, helping to minimize damage to clothes
Diminishes static and wrinkles
Saves you money on gas and electricity bills
Cons Of Dryer Balls:
Make a loud noise when drying clothes
Wool can fall off with extended use and move into the lint drawer
Not as effective with large loads of laundry
In "Dryer Balls Vs. Dryer Sheets: What’s The Difference?",Southern Living adds, “An advantage of wool dryer balls is they don't have additives that can be a skin irritant” for some.
My wife and I have not found any of the cons to be an issue, but our dryer is in the basement where extra noise isn’t a concern.
I do not recommend dryer balls as a holiday gift for the person who does most of the laundry in your household (we each do our own ever since the shrunken sweater incident over which I still feel great regret). But they might make for a good New Year’s resolution gift for the household.
… and you may want to experiment with detergent sheets
More recently, we have converted to laundry detergent sheets from liquid laundry detergent.
Laundry sheets are liquidless detergents designed as eco-friendly alternatives to chemical-laden bottle detergents that pollute our streams, landfills, and, at times, even our clothes. Laundry sheets also eliminate the need for all those plastic bottles. …
(They are) plastic-free sheets of concentrated laundry detergent whose ingredients are held together by a resin and dissolvable paper. They’re low-sudsing and dissolve in cold or hot water. And they’ll save space in your laundry room cabinet. … Most are claimed to be hypoallergenic — free of parabens, phosphates, bleaches, and dyes … their cost is in line with liquid detergents, pods, and packs.
Consumer Reports found the sheets they tested “mediocre to lousy” for stain removal when compared to liquid detergents. Their analysis concluded:
If you’re organizing your home around a sustainable lifestyle—and your laundry isn’t heavily soiled—laundry sheets may be a viable option. For instance, you could use the strips for routine loads and save the traditional liquid or pod detergent for deeper cleaning—using a minimal amount per load and increasing the dose only for dirtier items.
The New York Times’ Wirecutter product evaluation site had a harsher verdict, saying detergent sheets are “terrible at cleaning laundry”:
Simply put: If you use laundry sheets, you’re more likely to have to wash stained or smelly laundry multiple times and/or with hot water to get it even tolerably clean. That makes using laundry sheets inconvenient, and it likely negates any positive environmental impact.
Our experience so far has been positive, however.
Is Trump ignorant or is he just lying again?
The claim:
NBC’s Kristen Welker: You promised to end birthright citizenship on day one.
President-elect Donald Trump: Yeah. Absolutely.
KW: The 14th Amendment, though, says that, quote, “All persons born in the United States are citizens.” Can you get around the 14th Amendment with an executive action?
DT: Well, we’re going to have to get it changed. We’ll maybe have to go back to the people. But we have to end it. We’re the only country that has it, you know.
KW: Through an executive action? You’re going to —
DT: You know we’re the only country that has it. Do you know if somebody sets a foot, just a foot, one foot, you don’t need two, on our land, “Congratulations you are now a citizen of the United States of America.” Yes, we’re going to end that because it’s ridiculous.
KW: Through executive action?
DT: Do you know — well, if we can, through executive action.
First, no, the United States is not the only country that automatically confers citizenship on children born within its borders regardless of the citizenship or immigration status of the parents. From World Population Review:
The following (34) countries have unrestricted birthright citizenship: Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chad, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Fiji, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Jamaica, Lesotho, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Tanzania, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, the United States, Uruguay, and Venezuela.
Second, as Welker points out, this practice is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution (and has been upheld several times by the U.S. Supreme Court). An executive order can’t amend the Constitution, though I can imagine the highly partisan U.S. Supreme Court issuing a ruling saying that only citizens are “subject to the jurisdiction” of our laws for purposes of the 14th Amendment, which reads:
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are Citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. . ."
Third, if Trump goes “back to the people” on this issue, he’ll find opinions closely divided and probably not on his side.
From The Hill in 2023:
A poll from The Economist and YouGov released Wednesday showed that 60 percent of U.S. adults surveyed said the country should continue to provide citizenship to all who are born here, regardless of their parents’ status. Only a quarter said the country should not continue it.
From the Public Religion Research Institute in 2018:
In PRRI’s Pluralism Survey (conducted with The Atlantic), only 42% of respondents said that they would favor or strongly favor changing the Constitution to prevent children who are born in the United States to non-U.S. citizens from being granted citizenship.
From the Cato Institute, also in 2018:
The Hill partnered with HarrisX to conduct a nationally representative survey of 1,000 registered voters. … What about children born to mothers residing in the United States illegally? … A plurality (48%) support birthright citizenship for children born to mothers living in the U.S. illegally while 38% oppose and 14% aren’t sure.
And finally, the idea that “if somebody sets a foot, just a foot, one foot, you don’t need two, on our land, ‘Congratulations you are now a citizen of the United States of America,’” is just weird, falling-off-the-barstool nonsense.
I had more to say about the birthright citizenship issue in Tuesday’s Picayune Plus.
… but of course Trump is Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year.”
Since 1927, Time has named “the person or group of people who, for better or worse, had the greatest influence on the events of the year.” It isn’t necessarily an honor. The title has been bestowed on Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, Ayatollah Khomeini and Mikhail Gorbachev (twice).
No one on the world stage is even close to Trump for having influenced the events of the past year, largely for the worse in my view. The only argument for not bestowing the title upon him again (he was Person of the Year in 2016 and arguably could have been several more times) is that he’ll be insufferable about claiming it as a great honor.
I’m not mourning Joe
In a column in The Atlantic, David Frum recounted an “unsettling experience” he had last week as a guest on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” He’d made a joke referencing an NBC News story saying secretary of defense nominee Pete Hegseth’s heavy drinking had been of concern to his colleagues at Fox News. “If you’re too drunk for Fox News, “ Frum quipped, “you’re very, very drunk indeed.”
Later in the show, co-host Mika Brzezinski read an on-air apology:
The comment was a little too flippant for this moment that we’re in. … We have differences in coverage with Fox News, and that’s a good debate that we should have often, but right now I just want to say there’s a lot of good people who work at Fox News who care about Pete Hegseth, and we will want to leave it at that.
Frum saw this as a mewling effort to appease the vindictive Donald Trump and wrote:
It is a very ominous thing if our leading forums for discussion of public affairs are already feeling the chill of intimidation and responding with efforts to appease.
The context was the controversy over the Nov. 15 visit Brzezinski and her co-host/spouse Joe Scarborough paid to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate for an off-the-record conversation intended to “restart communications.” Like other MSNBC hosts, Brzezinski and Scarborough have been highly critical of Trump, and Trump has fired back with such wild allegations as that Scarborough is a murderer.
Many pundits melted down at the very idea of a productive, off-the-record conversation with a man whose aspirations are openly fascistic. The Tribune ran an op-ed from former Illinois Lt. Gov. Bob Kustra headlined “ ‘Morning Joe’ hosts forgot their viewers on MSNBC when they visited Donald Trump,” that portrayed the sit-down as ring-kissing and “genuflecting at the altar of Trump,” even though Kustra limply conceded, “Who knows what really transpired at their meeting?”
For those of us who deeply believe the country has elected a man who will undermine the rule of law and govern as the dictator he promised, it is imperative that we batten down the hatches and not scurry off to make nice with those who violate our constitutional system every way they can. … It had been Scarborough and Brzezinski who strengthened and nurtured our fierce objections to a political figure who already had proven how he makes short shrift of the U.S. Constitution. It raises the question of just how committed they are to the very arguments they sold us.
What will answer that question, though, is not the dancing eyebrows of the lefty purists but the words of Brzezinski and Scarborough on their show. And as a regular listener to the one-hour podcast version of “Morning Joe,” I’ve so far detected no softening or evidence of capitulation.
Scarborough fired back last week in a monologue I found persuasive:
The main complaint was that we called Donald Trump's rhetoric fascistic during the campaign. And then we went down to have an off-the-record conversation with him. And guess who else does that? Let me see. The New York Times. The Washington Post. The Wall Street Journal. … You know what? I even think folks from The Atlantic might be doing that.
If they have a chance to talk on the background with the incoming president … yeah, they would do it. In fact, as somebody wrote … “I'd be fired if I had the opportunity to go in and talk to somebody who's the incoming president of the United States and I didn't do it.” … That's what reporters do. … That's what I've been doing for years. … The only difference between what we did on that visit and what the New York Times, Washington Post Wall Street Journal, everybody else is doing, is we were transparent. We actually told you. …
You can do two things at the same time. You can say he used fascist rhetoric and still go in and talk to him. You know why I do that? To get the read of the man … to get the read of where the country's going so I can come back here and talk to you and let you know what the hell is going on … and give you context, insight, and background … and you'll be smarter because of it. You'll be smarter, and you have been over the last several weeks because of what we talked about with Donald Trump for an hour, hour and a half. We got information on where they're going. …
I'm sick and tired of the nonsense, and I wish we'd all just get to work doing the things we need to do, which is our job, right? Which is talking to people who are going to determine where this country goes over the next four years. …
The meeting that we went to was not kissing the ring or bending the knee or all your other ridiculous headlines. It was a serious meeting. And quite frankly, if we hadn't told anyone about it, if we hadn't shared it with our viewers to be transparent — and that was our call because it was a meeting on background — nobody would've known about it.
Cheer Chat
An update on the 26th annual Songs of Good Cheer winter holiday sing-along programs at the Old Town School of Folk Music.
We have five more shows beginning tonight. At this writing, there are about 30 seats left for Thursday, and fewer than seven left for the shows Friday and Saturday.
We performed a free, one-hour, warmup show for seniors in the area on Wednesday afternoon and worked out a few kinks along the way.
Last chance to come sing with us! Tonight through Sunday afternoon, tickets are on sale online and at the Old Town School of Folk Music.
Minced Words
Brandon Pope and Jon Hansen joined host John Williams on this week’s episode of “The Mincing Rascals” podcast. Topic include the threat of mass deportation and an end to birthright citizenship. Jason Lee’s decision to vote in Texas and public response to the arrest of Luigi Mangione, the person who allegedly shot UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Plus recommendations:
Jon: “Fellow Travelers” a series on Showtime about McCarthyism
John: “Revenge of the Tipping Point,” a new book by Malcolm Gladwell
Brandon: “Black Doves” a spy-thriller series on Netflix
Subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts. Or bookmark this page. If you’re not a podcast listener, you can hear an edited version of the show at 8 p.m. most Saturday evenings on WGN-AM 720.
Read the background bios of some regular panelists here.
Quotables
A collection of compelling, sometimes appalling passages I’ve encountered lately
Putting a baby in a freezer would kill it, but freezing embryos preserves them. That's why an embryo isn't a baby. Hope that helps.— unknown
I have always found it quaint and rather touching that there is a movement in the U.S. that thinks Americans are not yet selfish enough. — Christopher Hitchens on libertarians
If you’re celebrating mass deportations of distraught, exhausted, human beings, seeking refuge, you probably shouldn’t be sweetly singing Christmas songs about a baby with “no crib for a bed” — John Pavlovitz
Any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals. GET READY TO ROCK!!! — Donald Trump
I’m not intimidated by a man whose actions on January 6th showed a cowardly disregard for democracy and the rule of law. A man too frightened to serve in the military, and a who requires a strong man like Putin to feel secure. While his supporters were attacking the Capitol, Trump sat in the White House, watching in glee as law enforcement and elected officials scrambled to protect our republic. … I’m confident that the name “Trump” will be a stain on our history, and my son will be proud of what I did. — Adam Kinzinger
Quips
In Tuesday’s paid-subscriber editions, I present my favorite tweets that rely on visual humor. Subscribers vote for their favorite, and I post the winner here every Thursday:
The new nominees for Quip of the Week, another special dad-jokes edition:
I say “mucho” to all my Spanish-speaking friends because it means so much to them.
My wife says she's listening to every Beatles song in alphabetical order. I think she might be up to Something.
Q. What kind of pants does a psychic wear? A. Just a paranormal pants.
Q. What goes "ooooooooo"? A. A cow with no lips.
Q. Which knight can find anything? A. Sir Chengine.
That new corduroy pillow is really making headlines.
There's a man in America who claims he can rob supermarkets using telekinesis. Food for thought, isn't it?
The only thing flat-Earthers fear is sphere itself.
I remember the first time I saw a universal remote control. I thought to myself, “Wow this changes everything.”
My doctor just diagnosed me with a severe lack of awareness. That came out of nowhere.
Vote here and check the current results in the poll.
For instructions and guidelines regarding the poll, click here.
Why the new name for this feature? See “I’m rebranding ‘Tweet of the Week’ in a gesture of contempt for Elon Musk.”
Good Sports
Fine line
Rick Morrissey of the Sun-Times about San Francisco 49ers tight end George Kittle in last Sunday’s game against the Bears: “He found himself so open at times that he had to be treated for loneliness in the medical tent.”
Unpopular opinion: Conferences and divisions are dumb
The playoff brackets for the college football championship are nutty. The seeding does not match the season-ending college football rankings
The top four teams in the end-of-season rankings ought to have first-round byes in the 12-team tournaments, and No. 2 Georgia and No. 1 Oregon are certainly deserving. But No. 8 Boise State — the Mountain West champion— and No. 10 Arizona State — the Big 12 champion — are not. No. 3 Notre Dame and No. 4 Texas got screwed.
The reason is that the sentimental numbnuts who devised this playoff scheme gave preferable treatment and ridiculous deference to conference winners.
The Big Ten’s recent expansion to 18 teams that stretch from Rutgers University in New Jersey to UCLA in Los Angeles has rendered the concept of conferences absurd, a conceptual throwback to the days when travel was arduous and regional groupings of teams made sense. The 16-team Southeast Conference (SEC) is more compact, but, c’mon, Texas and Oklahoma are not Southeastern states, and neither are Kentucky and Missouri.
Scrap them. Let the schools and schedule-makers contrive the best regular season match-ups regardless of geography, then put the best 12 teams (16 would be better) into the postseason tournament. Same for pro sports, where leagues and divisions simply result in less-deserving teams from weak collections of teams making the postseason.
It would be possible to keep regional and traditional rivalries alive while still ditching the conference idea.
Who’s with me?
Tune of the Week
I’ve been opening up Tune of the Week nominations in an effort to bring some newer sounds to the mix. I’m asking readers to use the comments area for paid subscribers or to email me to leave nominations (post-2000 releases, please!) along with YouTube links and at least a few sentences explaining why the nominated song is meaningful or delightful to you. The following nomination is from Bob E.
“The Wexford Carol” with Alison Krauss and Yo-Yo Ma combines the voice of an angel with the instrumentation of consummate artists. You don't have to be a Christian, or even religious, to appreciate the beauty of this exquisite rendition:
Within a manger he was laid And by his side the virgin maid Attending on the Lord of life Who came on earth to end all strife
The ending-of-all-strife thing is a work in progress, certainly.
The above was recorded for Ma's 2008 album, “Songs of Joy & Peace.” The long abandoned blog “Relatively Unsung Christmas Carols” says:
"Wexford Carol" takes its name from County Wexford, which is on the east coast of Ireland, and one of the few traditionally English-speaking counties of Ireland, rather than Gaelic-speaking. …
The origins of "Wexford Carol" are the subject of some debate in the realms of carol history academia (that's totally a thing). If you skim the surface of its history you'll find many claims of the carol dating to the 12th century, often in its "original" Gaelic form. However, as I said before, County Wexford is an English speaking region, so it's much more likely that the opposite is true: the lyrics were originally in English and adapted to Irish Gaelic by musicians intent on preserving the language, especially in the early 20th century.
So it seems that while the carol may well date to a few centuries ago, it's likely not that old. …
It's "Wexford Carol's" tune that draws attention to it, which employs a haunting mixolydian mode form, giving it a sort of unfinished or cliff-hanging feel. That's thanks to a minor seventh in an otherwise major scale.
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Eric Zorn is a former opinion columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Find a longer bio and contact information here. This issue exceeds in size the maximum length for a standard email. To read the entire issue in your browser, click on the headline link above. Paid subscribers receive each Picayune Plus in their email inbox each Tuesday, are part of our civil and productive commenting community and enjoy the sublime satisfaction of supporting this enterprise.
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What an incredibly sad state we’re in that we’ve re-elected a man who, in a national network interview, tells an obvious and easily proven lie about how other countries handle birthright immigration. My god, what the hell are we doing here?
Your college football poll is too binary. While I miss the old geography-based conferences, I still like the rivalries of the conference structure and I am still in favor of granting automatic bids (but not preferential seeds!) to some conference champions. Clemson being able to play their way in to the playoff with a 12-seed by winning a conference championship felt right; Arizona State earning a bye for the same result did not.